12 September 2011

The lamestream media herd sneaks in and spikes the kool-aid /// then starts bitchin' when they wake up with a hangover? ///

Thank goodness for the sagacity of online commenters...And call me cynical... but this postmortem, er... postmortem... smacks, not of journalistic integrity, but one last attempt to squeeze blood out of this one-time fairy tale...

Last week, La Presse columnist Patrick Lagacé didn’t mince words: “Mr. Layton ran for the highest office knowing that the crab was gnawing at his bones. We should have been told. This would have changed the vote of thousands of people, that’s clear."

5
comments:

Neo - I understand your point of view. However, any attempt to discuss Mr Layton's health before now would have met (and did meet) with serious objections as to the timing of the query and the motives of the inquirer. It is more than time Canadians had a serious discussion as to how much should be made public about the health of our leaders.

in actual fact... anyone attempting to do anything other than kiss jack layton's sainted ass has been thoroughly demonised by the msm and the lunatic left.

given the fact that jacko was caught naked in a seedy downtown brothel... i have to question the intelligence of these same folks.

and when olivia jumped in to defend this incident... it tells you everything you need to know about their legendary love. now she refuses to address the "cancer" question... because she wants to protect other cancer patients.

Neo - I agree with you re the bs. That's why I glad to see - finally - a discussion about Mr Layton's health before and during the election, and if his condition was much graver than we were all led to believe.

You're bang-on with the observation that any questioning of Layton's health during the campaign was seen as being partisan somehow, rather than a genuine inquiry into his fitness to lead.

However, I think this is a symptom of disease within a media that is disinclined to report on hard facts, or provide real analysis of the issues at hand. Instead, they gleefully report on spin, the message behind the message, and the optics, rather than the content of a campaign.

When Layton offered to strip down in front of the media, it was universally hailed as a brilliant response, that set just the right tone. His cane was commented upon constantly --how he'd raise it up and wave it to crowds. The cane became a prop (in both senses), but what the media focused upon was how this image resonated with the electorate, and how clever the marketing boys with NDP were to turn something so benign into an advantage.

Layton's health, and the visible indicators of it (such as his cane) became just another facet of the optics of politics, no different from his perpetually rolled-up shirt sleeves (invoking Bobby Kennedy & getting down to work).

But the obvious question was one the media didn't pursue. They are so hung up on seeing how everything is spun, they've become blind to the actual issues at hand.

Layton looked gravely ill before the campaign, and his health seemed to rapidly improve on the hustings. A month after the election, he was obviously on death's door.

If the media had any credibility, they'd ferret out his health records, find out what drugs he was being given during the campaign, and then ask some hard questions about how the NDP deliberately misled Canadians by not disclosing the health issues of their leader. But of course, doing so would lead to the media examining how they were so obviously duped, through their own willing blindness and incompetence --and that's not something the media is going to subject themselves to.